PlayStation Boss Says Company Now Does 'Much More Rigorous and More Frequent Testing' After Concord's Failure

After a high-profile nonaccomplishment successful Concord and a high-profile occurrence successful Astro Bot past year, PlayStation is looking to set its strategy to incorporated less unrecorded work games, much large franchises, and stricter oversight of its owned studios.

In an interrogation with Financial Times, PlayStation CEO Hermen Hulst says the institution is hoping to mitigate aboriginal big, costly risks with aboriginal games. “I don’t privation teams to ever play it safe, but I would similar for us, erstwhile we fail, to neglect aboriginal and cheaply.”

Concord was not a inexpensive failure. Analysts estimation Sony spent astir $250m connected the game, lone for it to merchantability truthful poorly that Sony unopen it down 2 weeks aft launch, and shuttered its developer, Firewalk Studios, not agelong after. By contrast, Astro Bot besides launched past twelvemonth to cosmopolitan acclaim, winning aggregate awards and selling 2.3 cardinal copies arsenic of March 2025, 1 of the best-selling games connected PlayStation 5.

The differences betwixt the 2 games are myriad, certainly, and their improvement stories are rather antithetic arsenic well. But what Hulst has taken distant from this is that determination needs to beryllium much supervision of Sony's owned studios to guarantee that games veering successful the absorption of Concord are spotted earlier they go costly failures, truthful they tin beryllium canceled oregon corrected successful time.

“We person since enactment successful spot overmuch much rigorous and much predominant investigating successful precise galore antithetic ways,” Hulst said. “The vantage of each failure . . . is that radical present recognize however indispensable that [oversight] is.”

Financial Times spoke to aggregate Sony workplace heads, who said that this oversight means much absorption connected radical testing, much connection betwixt interior Sony studios, and person relationships betwixt the studios' apical executives. “If we’re heading towards a elephantine landmine, similar there’s different workplace making precisely the aforesaid game, that’s bully information,” said Jason Connell, creation manager astatine Ghost of Yōtei workplace Sucker Punch.

That remark rings particularly poignant successful airy of Concord's failure, which analysts accidental occurred for a fig of reasons, including an oversaturation of multiplayer, unrecorded work shooters. Hulst suggests successful the interrogation that PlayStation isn't arsenic intent connected churning retired unrecorded work games arsenic it utilized to be. That said, PlayStation does person Bungie's Marathon coming up earlier March 2026, a crippled that has a fig of Bungie fans acrophobic amid delays, unit layoffs, and a wide deficiency of accusation arsenic to what the crippled entails.

But there's different strategy Hulst besides wants to pursue: helium wants more, monolithic Sony IP. Astro Bot's occurrence has travel astir implicit the people of aggregate games, with the small robot icon increasing successful popularity each time. According to Financial Times, Hulst wants studios to beryllium reasoning astir however their IP tin beryllium turned into bigger and bigger franchises implicit time, pursuing successful the footsteps of The Last of Us and Uncharted. “We instrumentality a precise intentional attack to IP creation . . . understanding however a caller conception tin crook into an iconic franchise for PlayStation, that tin past again go a franchise for radical beyond gaming,” helium said.

Currently connected the docket, PlayStation has Ghost of Yōtei and Lost Soul Aside coming this year, with Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls and Housemarque's Saros for 2026. Other games specified arsenic Fairgames, Marvel's Wolverine, Naughty Dog's Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, Marathon, and much stay successful the works.

Rebekah Valentine is simply a elder newsman for IGN. You tin find her posting connected BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a communicative tip? Send it to [email protected].